Syndromes and a Century (2006)

All of the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul I've seen have been absolutely brilliant, characterized by an unusual unruly approach to the logic of cinema. Syndromes and a Century is no exception. As always, it's quite a challenge to even describe what the film is about. Weerasethakul's films defy the idea that a film should move from A to B in a steady, intelligible progression in which the viewer should be able to pick out the main dramatical turning points. Syndromes and a Century, or his other films (the ones I've seen) aren't like that. Traditional narratives are almost entirely eschewed, even though he usually still manages to provide surprisingly touching moments of interpersonal encounters (which you might not expect from the description "experimental film"). The films' movement consists of leaps, and it is often not that clear where the leaps take us and what they mean.

In the first section of Syndromes and a Century, the setting is rural Thailand and the main characters comprise a few people working in or visiting a hospital. There are love problems, a medical check-up and some rather odd, but still strangely everyday, conversations, some of which takes place between a monk and a dentist. Then we see the same, or almost the same, scenes played out in other settings, in a future time, or alternative time. One may want to see the film as rooted in a Buddhist tangle of concepts and such concepts also appear in the story itself. But when those themes are taken up explicitly it takes place between people who relates to them in various ways.

In the middle of these conversations and repetitions there are raptures and even more elusive scenes. In one of them, the camera whirls around a steamy hospital boiler room. The camera gravitates towards an open pipe, and lingers there for many minutes while a score of monotonous noise music churns and churns. It's a marvelous scene, even though I have almost no clue what is going on. In this latter section of the film I cannot help thinking about Kubrick. The camera has an icy, Kubrickian feel - and meticulous visual composition - in its evocative exploration of the white, eerie hospital. Even though this film doesn't stop overwhelming me, I constantly have a very hard time pinpointing what atmosphere the scenes exude; this film induces a multitude of feelings and there is no safe pattern at all to fall back on. Weerasethakul's penchant for playfulness doesn't at all end up self-indulgent: rather, I get the impression of a director who is endlessly interested in the strangeness of the surrounding world and the mysterious ways in which we humans move about. If it is something that his movies do exude, it is wonder.

Syndromes and a Century is said to be based on the director's own life, along with his parents' recollection of the past. And well, if you think about it as a film about memories, a more open-ended and mesmerizing account of what memories are is offered than most other films, working with an impoverished set of "flashbacks", succeed in doing: here, memory is connected with meditation, longing, dream, fantasy and utopia/dystopia. The idea, so fondly embraced by most movies, about a steady and self-evident "now" is completely disrupted. The fine thing about the very end of the film is that I still have no idea where the film is, where it has taken us, even though I do get a very specific sense of place.